


You'll Find Me

by antiquitea



Category: Captain America (2011)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-01
Updated: 2011-12-01
Packaged: 2017-10-26 17:59:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/286267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antiquitea/pseuds/antiquitea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They keep meeting each other, and losing each other, time and time again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You'll Find Me

**Author's Note:**

> Fill over at the [Cap Kink Meme](http://capkink.livejournal.com).

**New York, July 1940**

Ever since Steve Rogers had met Bucky Barnes, there was a sense of ease and comfortableness with their relationship that him wondering where it had come from. In the beginning, Steve chalked it up to the two of them coming from similar backgrounds that didn’t hold much of anything for them. Their futures were uncertain, but even as children they knew that they would always have one another.

There were very few people in his life that he had been close to, and Bucky was without a doubt the person who owned the biggest piece of his heart. Love was an unspoken agreement between the both of them, something that they didn’t say, but something that they both knew. Declarations of “jerk” and “punk” were thinly veiled ways of saying “I love you,” without actually having to say it. Bucky had said it once, but it had been brought one by one glass of whisky too many on a particularly cold January evening after their heat had been turned off.

But even still, Steve sometimes wondered. He’d often heard people joke about knowing someone in a past life, and Steve thought about it in passing, that maybe once upon a time that he and Bucky had been attached at the hip in another capacity, in another time and place. Steve had joked with Bucky about it one day, as they sat on the roof of their apartment building drinking beers because in the stifling heat of the summer it was cooler outside of their unit, that he was sure they had known one another before.

“What do you mean before?” Bucky asked, furrowing his brow after taking a swig of beer.

Steve shrugged it off, as if it hadn’t meant a thing. “Nothing. I don’t know. Okay, you know how sometimes people talk about past lives?” Bucky made a face to indicate that maybe he’d heard it before, but didn’t particularly bank that information anywhere within his brain. “Well, maybe we knew each other at some other point in time. Before we met when we were kids, I mean.”

Bucky chuckled, eyes turning to the horizon. “Yeah. Maybe. Never really thought of it that way. It would certainly explain a lot of things.”

Steve didn’t ask what Bucky had meant by that, simply met his eyes and smiled, looked at him perhaps a little too long, before looking toward the horizon as well, concentrating on his beer. He could still feel Bucky’s gaze upon him, and felt himself getting a little warm under his eyes. Bucky didn’t say anything, merely reached out and patted Steve on the leg. It was something he had done many times before, and yet Steve felt a little breathless after the interaction, and hoped that Bucky would just attribute it to the asthma.

“What kinds of things would it explain, Buck?” Steve finally asked, unable to bear not knowing what was on his friend’s mind.

Bucky gave a slight shrug of his shoulders, tapping his fingers along the bottle of beer in his hands. “I don’t know. I suppose, I’ve always just felt so comfortable around you, even when we first met. There was no second guessing it, almost like we were meant to know one another. You ever get that feeling?”

“Yeah,” Steve replied honestly, looking at Bucky with wide eyes. “I do.”

Bucky reached over and ruffled Steve’s hair, which the other man attempted to stop but wrenching himself out of his friend’s grasp. Laughing, Bucky only let up after Steve gave him a good natured punch in the arm and threatened him. Deciding he’d over stimulated Steve enough for one day, he put his arm around his friend, and they watched the sun fall past the horizon together.

All the while, Steve was having difficulty getting what Bucky said about them meaning to know one another out of his mind. There could certainly be no merit to the thought; it didn’t seem at all probable.

#

**France, July 1918**

Where Steve Rogers was not big in physique, he more than made up for with will, courage, and heart. While most of the men in the 3rd U.S. Infantry Division were quick to point or chuckle under their breath as he passed them in the trenches, James Barnes did not, always offering the slighter man smokes, even after he had already refused numerous times. Everyone called James “Bucky,” something he acquired due to his middle name, Buchanan. Steve and Bucky had met shortly after arriving on the Western Front some months previous, both having been conscripted into the Army, both from Brooklyn. They marvelled at how they had not met one another before, considering that they had run in similar circles. Though, Steve had recalled with vivid clarity seeing Bucky around once or twice (likely more) at places like the bars and the theatre, but said nothing to that effect. How could he have ever forgotten seeing the strapping young man with the bright blue eyes?

On the Western Front, the two had become fast friends, virtually inseparable and joined at the hip, even when they burst from the trenches amidst all of the chaos, crossing the lines, and eventually finding each other if they had lost one another during the firefight. Bucky often laughed hysterically, relieved to find Steve again, hugging him tightly, not at all minding the mud, and bits flesh and blood that didn’t belong to either of them that they might have been wearing. Steve never said anything, but he had been over the moon with happiness every time he survived a battle, and lived to see his friend again.

Steve didn’t look like he belonged in the Army, and had lied about his numerous ailments and health problems. Heck, his asthma alone would have made him ineligible for service. The Army, desperate for soldiers had looked the other way, and few knew that Steve’s asthma could often get the better of him during the German shellings. That is, of course, few besides Bucky. Shortly after meeting Bucky, they had been a part of Operation Michael, when German forces launched from the Hindenburg Line, and Bucky had realized with a degree of terror that Steve was having difficulty breathing, choking down air like every breath might have been his last, doing his best to soldier on through it, and act like his lungs weren’t screaming for relief. In the dark of the night, Bucky had wrapped his arms around Steve and held him close, rocking him back and forth and muttering words of comfort, telling him that it would be all right.

It had been – at least for a little while.

“One of these days you’ll take me up on my offer,” Bucky chuckled, placing a cigarette between his lips as he sat down in the mud, his back pressed against a bombed out building.

“I doubt that,” Steve said, shouldering his rifle before joining the other man, sitting beside him, hands bracing against the barely-there wall so that he did not completely fall into the mud. “Smoking isn’t for me. It wouldn’t get along very well with my asthma.”

Bucky smiled and gave the curtest of nods before lighting his cigarette, taking a long pull from it as he watched some of the other soldiers move about. Steve’s gaze turned toward Bucky, watching him smoke languidly, as if he had all of the time in the world, when really at any moment they could be on the receiving end of German artillery. Even in the moments of firefight, Bucky seemed unusually calm, though nevertheless set on completing the mission or the task at hand. Meanwhile, Steve fumbled through battles that often left him wondering how he was still alive. He had no doubt in his mind that he Bucky to thank for that, the other soldier having his back, even when Steve wasn’t fully aware of it.

“They say that the Germans will attack soon.”

That shook Steve out of his reverie. “Who says?”

Shrugging, Bucky scuffed his boot against the ground. “I’ve heard it. It’s only a matter of time, really. It never stays quiet for too long.”

Bucky had been frighteningly correct, as the German offensive launched an attack east of Reims later that day. On the south bank of the Marne, where Steve, Bucky, and the rest of their unit were located, the Germans delivered a barrage of gunfire. Though the 3rd U.S. Infantry Division held fast, they were not without their casualties before launching a counterattack.

One of those killed at been Bucky.

Steve recalled in vivid clarity what had happened, and the images would not stop playing over and over again in his mind. Every time he blinked, he saw it against the backs of his eyelids. Bucky had been right next to him, and there had been no indication that he might die, nothing was out of the ordinary. One moment, he had been firing toward the enemy, and the next he had slumped over, as if exhausted, his rifle falling from his hands and into the mud along the edge of the riverbank. It didn’t take Steve long to deduce what happened, though he saw the bullet hole between Bucky’ eyes he had grabbed him by the shoulder and shook him anyway, hollering his name, willing him to wake up.

They were forced to leave his body on the riverbank, though Steve had tried to haul him somewhere safe. He had never felt more furious in his entire life, thinking that his friend deserved better than that. That night, he pulled out the pack of cigarettes that had been in Bucky’ front pocket and asked the other men if any of them had a light. He didn’t enjoy smoking in the slightest, but it had taken the edge off, calmed his nerves. In the predawn light of the morning, his chest sore from the asthma attack that had left him coughing and gasping for air. Bucky was no longer there to comfort him, to tell him that he would be just fine, and his heart ached more than his lungs.

The Second Battle of the Marne lasted until August, and while it was declared a victory for the Allies, Steve had a difficult time stomaching the notion of the battle having been a victory. But, despite how heavy the loss of his friend, of Bucky who always offered him cigarettes and promised to introduce him to some girls when they got back to Brooklyn, Steve went on, because it was what he had to do, and what the Army expected him to do.

Months later, during the Battle of Saint-Mihiel, Steve had been shot while pulling a man by the name of Hodge out of the way from a German sharp shooter who was slowly picking off men in their company. It had hurt, hurt a lot actually, but Steve had seen worse on other men, and had seen them survive it. He had been taken to an aid station, refused medical treatment upon seeing the men worse off than him brought in, asking and then pleading with the nurses for their wounds to be tended to first.

Days later, Steve Rogers was dead of sepsis.

#

**Brooklyn, May 1943**

Standing in the doorway of their bedroom, Bucky looked at Steve, who sat on the edge of their bed, fidgeting and looking uneasy. They shared a bedroom and a bed mostly out of necessity; though in those winter months the extra body heat went a long way. Bucky had taken the girls out dancing for a little bit, then realized what he really wanted to be doing was spending his last evening on American soil with his best friend.

“How’d it go at the recruiting office?” he asked, stepping into the bedroom and taking off his coat.

Steve shrugged, rubbing his hands on his bony knees. “Same old, same old,” he replied. Sighing, Steve looked at the floor. “Guess I’ll have to find some other way.”

Bucky nodded as he undid his tie, and then joined Steve on the bed, sitting next to him. He put his arm around Steve and hugged him briefly, reassuringly. “You’ll figure something out.”

“Yeah.”

He hated seeing his friend looking so despondent, knowing that he wanted to enlist, wanted to help. Bucky’s heart broke at the thought of him being turned away again, but also at the notion of leaving his friend behind. Whether driven by the couple of drinks he had that night, or not knowing when he might see him again, Bucky leaned over and kissed Steve fondly on the cheek. Startled, Steve turned his head, only to have Bucky’s lips meet his.

It was a slow, tentative, frightened sort of kiss, as if they both knew that they shouldn’t. Suddenly, Steve was clutching at Bucky desperately, and Bucky let him, hands grabbing onto Steve’s shoulders to steady him. As the moment stretched into two, Bucky suddenly pulled back, and the two stared at one another with wide eyes. Steve sheepishly excused himself, rushing from the bedroom as quickly as his legs would take him, and Bucky sighed and flopped down onto the bed and starred at the ceiling.

They said nothing more about it.

#

**England, October 1943**

Steve looked at the glass in his hands, swirling the amber coloured liquid around in it, wishing it had the same effect on him that it once had. There would be nights when Bucky would drag him down to the bars, or when he’d produce a bottle of something from his coat pocket and declare that he and Steve were going to share it.

Never again would that happen.

Steve slammed the nearly empty glass of scotch onto the table in front of him, propping his elbow on the table and resting his forehead in his palm. He was not a man quick to anger, but given the circumstances he would have burned all of Europe if it meant having Bucky back. There would be no more sitting on the roof of their building drinking and watching the sunset because it was too hot in their apartment. There would be no more Bucky dragging Steve out to meet girls he’d sweet talked into going on a double date with him and his friend. There would be no more Bucky saving Steve from brawls in the alleys of Brooklyn that he couldn’t fight.

There was no more Bucky, and there wasn’t any more time.

Steve had realized in a haunting moment of clarity when they had been on the train, moments before Bucky had fallen what had been going on for the entirety of their lives. He thought back to a few summers previous on the roof in Brooklyn, spouting off half drunken madness about knowing each other before, that they must’ve crossed paths somewhere else in history, and found out all too late that it had been true. He didn’t think anything more of it, merely because it had made sense. That hadn’t meant that he understood in the slightest how or why it was happening, but it had felt so right. Steve remembered the night on the Marne, and how he had watched Bucky die. By some divine force, they’d both been given another chance.

Steve had an opportunity to save Bucky, to make up for what he’d been unable to do in France so many years before.

He had seen it in Bucky’s eyes as he had reached for him, willing him closer, just a little bit closer – Bucky saw it too. A river bank in France, caught and pinned down under the firefight of German artillery, that’s where they had been when Bucky had died in 1918, and Steve wasn’t about to let it happen again.

As he had watched Bucky fall, his heart leaping into his throat as he discovered that again, there was absolutely nothing that he could do, he felt that he had failed him. He had the chance to save him, to bring him back from the brink and to say all of the things that he had wanted to say about their short time together in the past, to tell him about Reims, how they had won, and there was no doubt that it wouldn’t have happened without him. They’d been brought together once again to finish what they had never started while sitting in trenches on the Western Front, and Steve had let it all slip from his fingers.

Steve pressed his hand against his mouth, fighting back the sob that threatened to break on through and destroy what little resolve he had left. In the distance, he heard the careful and precise movements of Peggy coming to the building, and he hung his head and desperately wished that the alcohol would have some sort of effect on him, as it once had on the rooftop in Brooklyn.

He adored Peggy, he truly did. In another time, perhaps another place, they would have grown old together. However, it was not to be this time. He hadn’t the heart to tell her as he banked the plane toward the frozen ocean that his last thoughts were not of dancing, but of the man he had betrayed to his death once more.

#

**Vietnam, September 1967**

When Bucky had received the piece of mail asking him to report to the war office, he’d almost burned it in the middle of their living room. Steve had stopped him, grabbing his wrist and then pulling the lighter from his hand and giving him a stern look. Steve wasn’t much bigger than his friend, if at all, but he possessed a determination that seemingly gave him strength and occasionally leverage over Bucky. They’d been waiting for it, for one of them to get the letter that would change their lives. They had agreed that when one of them got the letter, that they would both go together, but Bucky had already consumed half a bottle of vodka when Steve got home, holding aloft the unopened letter and asking him if he was ready to become a dead man.

They’d both passed their physicals, receiving the 1A stamps on their records, and found themselves attached to the Marines. The anti war marches they attended in the Village became nothing more but a memory as they traded sleeping in early into the afternoon for lurking within bushes and stagnant bodies of water, waiting for Charlie some months later. It wasn’t that Steve didn’t support the soldiers who found themselves thrust into horrible conditions, expected to do atrocious things, but he certainly didn’t support the war. The only thing that kept him from enlisting sooner was that he had been afraid to leave Bucky behind. They’d practically been brothers since their days at the orphanage, where they stayed until they were old enough to leave of their own will, no one having wanted them (though they had done everything they could to prevent themselves from getting adopted, and ultimately separated).

Before shipping out, Steve had been having vivid dreams that almost appeared to be recollections, involving him and Bucky in the past, during times that they had not been alive. There was a battle near the Marne where Steve was slight and asthmatic, a train on a snow covered mountains where he spoke of something called “Hydra,” and they were both there, and it seemed as real as it possibly could have. Each time he looked at Bucky, he recalled having watched him die, though he was standing right there in front of him. Before Bucky had been conscripted, it was something that Steve had been experiencing for months, though he never spoke a word of it, afraid of the implications. Though, there had been an evening where Steve had caught Bucky looking at him like he might a girl he saw in the Village, and Steve had swallowed thickly and tried to think nothing of it.

It had been during Operation Swift that Bucky had met Steve’s eyes, and held his gaze for a little too long. Steve furrowed his brow, trying to decipher the look on Bucky’s face, when his best friend leaned in closely brushing his lips against the shell of his ear.

“Don’t think I don’t know,” he said softly. “I’ve known longer than you have.”

Steve feigned ignorance, looking anywhere at Bucky as their company moved through the streets. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The Marne. Hydra,” Bucky explained, as if they were the most obvious of explanations. “You see it too, Steve. We were there.”

Carefully switching the shoulder on which he had his rifle, Steve gave Bucky a “look,” but the other man merely raised his eyebrows as if to say “prove me wrong.” Steve laughed a little, shaking his head and turning his attention to a pocket of buildings up ahead.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” he said, his eyes unusually bright with mirth.

“Not a goddamned lick,” Bucky added, idly scratching at his chin, a few days’ growth of stubble covering the bottom portion of his face. “But I’m not freaked out about it. Are you?”

Steve didn’t even have to think about it. “Not a bit.”

“Good.” Bucky stopped suddenly and grabbed Steve by the arm, and the other man looked at him slight a slight degree of alarm. “Don’t worry, you’re all right. I just wanted to say that when we get back to Brooklyn –” That was the first time in a long while that Bucky had said when and not if, “– you and I are going to sort this business out, okay? Try to figure out why.”

“Unfinished business,” Steve replied, meeting his friend’s eyes, though he had to reach and adjust his helmet slightly in order to do so. “On my part at least.”

Bucky’s brow furrowed in confusion. “What are you talking about?”

Sighing, Steve cast his eyes toward the fine dust that swirled around their feet under the heat of the sun. “I have to do right by you, Bucky. That’s why this keeps happening. Those other times, I let you die.”

It took a moment, but Bucky smiled, laughed a little as if it were the most absurd thing he had ever heard. Steve realized when he felt fingers clutching on his bare arm that Bucky was still holding onto him. “You didn’t let me die, Steve. It just happened. Don’t think for a moment that any of that happened because of you. I wanted to be there, especially on the train. I would’ve followed you into Hell then, and I’d do it in a heartbeat now.”

Truthfully, those had not been words that Steve had wanted to hear. He pursed his lips together and looked down the street to a building to their left, where the rest of their company appeared to be heading. Looking back at Bucky, Steve was shocked to see his friend’s eyes had never left him. He forced a smile and gave Bucky a hearty pat on the shoulder, to pull him from whatever thoughts were playing in his mind. Steve could see that he was elsewhere.

“I know you would, and that terrifies me,” Steve said. “Now, come on. We’ve got plenty of time to talk about this.”

The middle of a street in the Que Son Valley had clearly not been the place to do so. As they had begun to close the distance between themselves and their company, Steve heard a crack from a nearby rooftop, and his eyes quickly followed the sound to his right. Raising his rifle, he fired off a single shot, and heard the agonized scream of the sniper, though no further sounds followed saved for the rushing of boots toward them.

“Sergeant Barnes!”

Bucky.

Steve turned and looked for his friend, but did not see him standing next to him. There was a wretched feeling in the pit of his stomach as he looked down at his feet to find Bucky lying on the ground, his helmet having fallen from his head, the pool of blood growing steadily beneath him from the gaping hole in his torso. Steve said not a word and dropped his rifle, dropped to his knees, grabbing Bucky’s hand and clutching it tightly, cradling his head and lifting it up off the ground.

“Hang on, Buck,” he said soothingly, looking into his friend’s steadily growing distant eyes. “Hang on, okay? We’re gonna get you out of here. Everything’s going to be fine. You’re going to be fine.”

Bucky smiled through the pain, squeezing Steve’s hand as if it were his lifeline. “Steve,” he managed to whisper in a choked voice, blood on his lips. “You’ll find me.”

“I don’t want to find you again,” Steve said, shaking his head as the company medic and another soldier were suddenly next to him, barking orders and grabbing things from their med kits. “I’m tired. I’m tired of searching for you. Just stay. Stay with me this time, okay?” Bucky didn’t respond, and Steve screwed his eyes shut tightly. “Bucky?” The medic grabbed him by the arm, and tried to pull him back. “Bucky!”

Bucky died that day in Que Son Valley, and Steve nearly found himself busted down from Captain to Private for the reckless behaviour he displayed over the course of the following days. While he had the utmost concern for his men, he didn’t care what happened to him. In fact, he knew the formula now, and it was bound to repeat itself. Bucky died, and Steve followed. He wanted to get it over with, to embark upon the next journey that would bring him and Bucky back together. He wasn’t about to go and “get” himself killed, but he was looking to speed up the process by any means necessary.

It wasn’t until some months later, during the Battle of Dak To that Steve had found himself looking a Vietnamese soldier right in the eyes. They had both been surprised to be so close to one another without the other having shot first. The soldier was no more than a boy, and Steve wondered what might happen if he fired first. Would this boy come back? Did he have something that he was meant to do, someone that he was meant to save? Steve had no idea, and didn’t care to know, turning his thoughts elsewhere, to Bucky, and their cramped apartment in Brooklyn, where they’d lived since the 30’s, scraping by as best they could. Despite everything, they’d had each other, and Steve didn’t want to go back there without Bucky, not if he had a chance to make it right.

After a moment, Steve laid down his rifle at the feet of the boy soldier and met his eyes. The boy looked at him with wide eyes, looking frantically around him, waiting for the ambush. Steve stepped forward, though the boy stepped backward. Steve took another long stride forward, grabbing the barrel of the boy’s gun, pulling the end of it to his forehead. A million life times could have passed, and Steve wouldn’t have noticed.

Steve took a deep breath, the image of Bucky waiting for him somewhere else in time filling his thoughts, then muttered, “Do it.”

#

**Massachusetts, November 1990**

A thin man whom a growth spurt had never been afforded, Steve Rogers spent the majority of his days along the highways of the country, thumb outstretched, hoping that someone might give him a ride. Sometimes it took a while, but he always ended up getting a lift into the cities that he was trying to get to. When asked what he was going to do when he got there, the answer was always the same.

“I’m looking for an old friend.”

The truth was, Steve had never met the man by the name of Bucky Barnes, but for a moment did not doubt his existence. He never told anyone why the sudden road trip across America, as they would have thought him insane. How did one explain to people that they were on a journey to find someone who was a stranger, but that they had known since 1918? There was no way to say it without then going for an immediate psychiatric evaluation, so Steve kept it mostly to himself.

Steve had always felt that something had been missing from his life, which had, in itself, felt very peculiar. He’d come from a loving family with a mother and father who had raised him into a respectable young man, went to a school where he had received decent marks, and had a handful of friends, but he was very aware that there was something that was not there that was supposed to be. The name came to him in dreams – Bucky. At first, he hadn’t thought much of it, figuring that the images of wars gone past could be attributed to watching war movies with his buddies. But soon, they weren’t just in his dreams, and it was as if he was being transported back into time, an active participant in the Second Battle of the Marne, which he didn’t even know enough about to dream of it with such vivid realness. He rescued a man from a military base in Italy, lead him and others into battle against the Nazis. There was a boy soldier in Vietnam who looked at him with wide eyes as he looked down the barrel of a gun, thinking of his friend before the trigger was pulled – Bucky.

He kept a journal of all the memories as he came back to them, checked out books from the public library that even so much as mentioned reincarnation. Steve had to know why this was happening, and why it had happened to many times before. He didn’t dare mention it to anybody, but he knew deep within him that he was meant to know a man by the name of Bucky Barnes, to save him, to make sure that he would be all right.

In his journals, Steve was aware of the fact that every time Bucky had died had been in battle. Steve hoped that the young man he didn’t yet know wasn’t somewhere in the Gulf. Though there didn’t seem to be a great deal of conflicts resulting in casualties, Steve could see the patterns, and was not there to protect him if that was in fact the case.

He knew had to save Bucky this time, a sense of weariness creeping in that gave him the feeling that he’d been traveling for half a century.

Steve’s journey brought him to Boston, though it didn’t feel right. New York, especially Brooklyn, had always seemed to be a constant, and in this instance it wasn’t. At least, not yet. Steve had scoured over phone books as he traveled from town to town, city to city, looking for information on “James Barnes.” Steve through the nickname Bucky in conversation with people he talked to every once in a while, though none had any idea who the mystery man might be. It wasn’t until a stop in Buffalo, that someone had nodded and said, “Yeah, I know a Bucky Barnes. Lives in Boston last I heard.”

Boston had found itself the next stop in Steve’s road trip.

Steve had an address, and not much else, to an apartment building that he found himself loathing because it wasn’t theirs and it wasn’t in Brooklyn, though it looked nice enough. Climbing the steps, his hands trembling as he pressed the button next to Bucky’s name, waiting on baited breath for him to answer, hoping that he wouldn’t sound nearly as crazy as he thought he might when he spoke to him. Bucky didn’t answer. Steve waited a moment, pressing the button again, but was still met with no response.

He felt his heart begin to flutter in his chest. He hadn’t come all this way only to get so close and have to turn around. As a last resort, he buzzed the superintendant, who informed him that his buzzer was on the fritz, so he would come down to meet him. Steve waited on the steps, pacing back and forth while waiting for the super, clutching the piece of paper in his hand with Bucky’s name and address on it so hard that he thought he might turn it into confetti. When the super finally pushed the door open, Steve offered him a smile and a handshake.

“I’m looking for a Mr. James Barnes,” he said, stepping into the landing at the bottom of the stairs. He looked at the paper in his hands. “I heard that he lives here.”

“Lived.”

Steve was taken aback for a moment. “Lived?”

The superintendant, a friendly looking older man sighed and shook his head sadly. Steve’s fingers tore into the paper, and he swallowed hard. _No. No …_

“I’m sorry, kid,” the man said softly. “Bucky died last week.”

It had never occurred to Steve that Bucky might die before he even met him. Something had been wrong with this timeline, they’d gone too long not knowing one another. The last two times, they’d grown up together, lived together until the day that Bucky died. But this time it had been all wrong, almost as if they weren’t meant to know one another. Steve couldn’t bear the thought of living in a world without his best friend, though he hadn’t known that Bucky had been just that to him until recently.

“Did you know him well?” the man asked.

“He was my best friend,” Steve replied, surprised at the tremble in his voice. “We, uh, we sort of lost touch over the years.” He hung his head and shoved the paper in his pockets, wanting to turn and run from the building as quickly as his thin, bony legs would take him. “How did it happen?”

“Hung himself,” the other man replied, and Steve had tightly squeezed his eyes shut and muttered, “Oh, Bucky.” A moment of silence passed between the two of them before the man pressed on. “He had a hard life. Lived in an orphanage, passed around from foster parent to foster parent. I didn’t know him that well, but he seemed like the good sort. I was sad to see him go.”

“Yeah,” Steve muttered. “Me too.” He was about to thank the man for his time, when he paused and chewed on his bottom lip. “Have you rented out his apartment yet?”

“No. Some of his stuff is still there. Was going to go in there tomorrow and clear the rest of it out.” The superintendant looked at Steve and smiled just a little. “You’re more than welcome to go up there if you want.”

That was exactly what Steve wanted. The superintendant took him up to Bucky’s apartment, unlocked the door for him and left him a key, telling him to lock up behind him and take all the time he needed, that he could slide the key under his door when he left. Steve marvelled at the kindness of the man as he closed the door behind him, looking around the sparse apartment. There wasn’t much, and Steve wondered how much Bucky had actually owned, how much of it might have been taken by other people in his life.

Steve wondered if Bucky knew about him, if he had the same memories as he had before. If he had, Steve couldn’t understand why he would take his own life – wouldn’t he try to look for him?

Passing through the rooms quietly, feeling that he was walking on someone’s grave, Steve couldn’t bring himself to touch anything. He hadn’t known Bucky, not at all. Steve had the sudden feeling that he shouldn’t be there, that everything was all wrong. Maybe whatever had happened in the past wasn’t meant to repeat itself, maybe this time he was just supposed to live his life, far away from Bucky Barnes.

As Steve passed by a small bookcase in the hallway, a particular book caught his eye. It wasn’t a novel, but a sketchbook. Did Bucky draw? Steve recalled a time when he had drawn, back when he’d been a boy in the 20’s and 30’s. He touched his fingertips to the book carefully, brushing along the spine before pulling it from the case. Lifting it carefully, he hoped to see pages full of sketches and watercolour paintings that Bucky might have done, but instead all of the pages were blank. Steve frowned and flipped through the sketchbook, coming to rest upon the last page.

He let out a sob and leaned against the wall, slumping down to the floor.

_Not this time, Steve. Too much has gone wrong, and I couldn’t have you involved in any of this. Please don’t think me a coward. I’ll see you. I promise._

Steve left Boston as quickly as he arrived, managing to hitch a ride with a man he met at a bar after he’d run from Bucky’s apartment, desperately in need of a drink. He hadn’t given much thought to what he might do without Bucky in his life. In the past, he’d been killed shortly afterward, but that was only after Bucky had been killed. Did he need to take his own life this time, just as Bucky had? They’d never had a lot of answers, but Steve felt uneasy with the notion of death. He didn’t feel as brave as he had before, and if it came that he had to die to see Bucky again, he wasn’t certain that he would be able to go through with it.

He didn’t need to think on it long. As he and the man from the bar drove along the highway in the dead of night, the roads slick with black ice caused the car to veer dangerously along the road and into oncoming traffic. Steve had looked into the headlights of the oncoming eighteen wheeler and brace himself, hoping that his driver survived without a scratch or died quickly, but he knew what was in store for him.

_I’m coming, Bucky._

#

**New York, September 2011**

Steve Rogers, a first year student who had barely set foot in New York before enrolling at NYU, stood in one of the hallways of the university, eyes scanning over the posters on the bulletin board, most of them advertising tutoring, extracurricular clubs, or students looking for roommates. His own apartment hunt hadn’t been going so well, so he had decided to bite the bullet and room with someone who could very well be a serial killer and might turn him into a lampshade. It was honestly better than dealing with his mother asking if he had a place to live yet. The backseat of his car was fine as far as he was concerned, but Mrs. Rogers thought otherwise.

There was one in particular that he found his attention drawn to, scrawled in Sharpie marker against a piece of loose-leaf and tacked crudely to the corkboard, as if the person who had posted it was in a hurry.

  
_WANTED – ROOMMATE_

_GREAT DEAL!_  
HOLE IN THE WALL APARTMENT ON THE NINTH FLOOR OF A BUILDING WITH NO ELEVATOR.  
TWO BEDROOMS AND NO MIRROR IN THE BATHROOM.  
NO DOOR FOR THE BATHROOM EITHER.  
NEXT DOOR NEIGHBOUR KNOWN TO SING SHOWTUNES AT THREE IN THE MORNING.  
HE’S PRETTY GOOD.  
MYSTERY MOLD IN THE BATHROOM – YOU CAN HELP ME CLEAN IT.

_HEAT AND HOT WATER APPARENTLY INCLUDED._

_SERIOUS INQUIRIES ONLY._

  
Steve smiled to himself as he read it, eventually reaching up to pull the piece of paper down. He folded it and put it in his back pocket, memorizing the address in Brooklyn as he left the hallway. Crossing the campus to his car, Steve wondered how long the note had been on the bulletin board, how desperate the lone tenant currently there might be – or how crazy. Though, as he’d yet to be unsuccessful in his own attempts of apartment acquisition, he didn’t see the slightest bit of harm in at least checking out the apartment in Brooklyn.

When Steve pulled in front of the building that bore the same address as the want ad, he had a sense of having been there before, though he had never set foot in the area before that day. Getting out of his car, Steve momentarily rested his lean body against the side of the car, regarding the building in awe, even though it looked like it should have been condemned long ago. When he finally pushed himself away from his car, Steve found that there was a physical ache that he associated with being in the entry of the building, and he momentarily wondered why his gut was filled with butterflies. He pressed the button on the intercom for the apartment on the ninth floor, and after a few moments there was a response on the other end of the line.

“Yeah?”

“Uh, yeah. My name’s Steve, I go to NYU. I saw your ad for the –”

“I’ll buzz you up.”

Steve’s hand was on the door, pulling it open moments later. He was first greeted with the sight of the staircase, and as promised, no elevator. Smiling, he counted his lucky stars that he did not have much of anything to actually move it. He took the stairs two at a time, his strong legs burning from the excursion. He hadn’t been the gym to a couple of days, with the move to the city, so he was thankful for the exercise.

When Steve reached the ninth floor, he walked slowly down the hallway until he found the apartment with the door ajar. Placing his palm against the door to push it open, he felt a rush, like he had been shocked by a door handle in the middle of winter, and he momentarily took a step back. Finally easing the door all of the way open, he stepped into the sparse apartment, unable to shake the feeling that this place meant something to him. The tenant was nowhere to be seen.

“Hello?” he called out.

Steve heard the footfalls of someone coming down the hallway of the cramped apartment, and shoved his hands in his pockets as he rocked back and forth on his heels. Around the corner came a man his own age, with dishevelled dark hair, bloodshot blue eyes, full lips downturned in slight frown, looking like he might have just rolled out of bed. He took one look at Steve and stopped dead in his tracks, feet seemingly rooted to the spot on which he stood.

Furrowing his brow in confusion, Steve opened his mouth to say something, but found himself suddenly stopped, almost against his own will. In the span of seconds, it was as if one hundred years of memories, memories that had once been his, memories that he had never had until as recently as that moment, had come rushing back to him. It shook him to the core, and Steve found himself trembling as he stood, now staring openly, at the man in front of him.

“Bucky,” he breathed, his voice choked and broken.

“Steve.”

They both rushed forward, meeting each other half way. Steve wrapped his arms around Bucky and held him close, tears stinging at the corners of his eyes. Bucky’s arms were tight around him, the man who was only a little slighter than he was, trembling against him. Laughing out of joy, Steve clutched at Bucky like he never had before, not during all of those years he had known him before that moment. Bucky was soon chuckling as well, though he pressed his face into Steve’s shoulder in an attempt to hide the quiet sobs that were escaping from him.

Suddenly, Steve pulled back, and his heart ached at the wounded look that Bucky wore momentarily. He cupped his old friend’s face in both of his hands, bending his head down and kissing him sweetly on the mouth. It did not take Bucky long to respond, though he seemingly had no intention of keeping the kiss sweet and gentle for long. His lips attacked Steve’s none too gently, kissing him like a drowning man in need of air, and Steve let him. That is, until Steve felt blood on his bottom lip from Bucky having bitten just a little too hard. Chuckling, Steve drew back and touched his fingertips to his lips while Bucky stood wrapped in his arms, looking sheepish.

“Sorry,” he muttered. “It’s just, well, it’s been –”

“So long,” Steve finished.

“Yeah,” Bucky said. He smiled. “Yeah, something like that.” He sighed and his hands were on Steve’s shoulders, clutching him as if in fear that he might leave, or might not be real. “I didn’t even know I was looking for you. Christ, how could I not know that I was looking for you?”

“I didn’t know either,” Steve replied, his thumbs sweeping against Bucky’s cheeks, under his red eyes. “I don’t think we were supposed to. Not this time.”

Bucky looked at him, drinking the sight of Steve in, unable to stop touching him. His hands were in his hair, feeling along the planes of his chest and his strong arms. “You’re bigger than when you were at Reims.”

“But not bigger than I was in `43.”

Bucky smiled, recalling the memory fondly. “No. No, you’re not.”

Steve suddenly grew serious as Bucky’s fingertips danced along his biceps, and he grabbed his friend’s shoulders tightly. Bucky’s eyes went wide until Steve tipped his head down and kissed him on the cheek.

“I’m not letting you go this time,” he whispered, lips then pressed against the shell of Bucky’s ear. “Not now, and not ever. This time, it’ll be when we’re old and gray. I’m not going to leave you on a riverbank, I’m not going to let you fall, I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”

“How?” Bucky whispered, pursing his lips together for a moment. “How can you be so sure? What if this time is like all of the rest? What if I –”

“No,” Steve interrupted, his voice stern. “Not this time.”

“Just like that?” Bucky asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Yeah,” Steve replied, placing a kiss on Bucky’s throat. “Just like that.” He hadn’t known it, but he had waited far too many years, and he wasn’t going to let the moment slip away like he had so many times before. “I love you.”

Bucky’s eyes went wide, his jaw set as he absorbed the words that had just been spoken to him. Steve pressed a series of kisses along Bucky’s clenched jaw until he reached his mouth, kissing him fondly, an unspoken promise upon his lips, which Bucky finally succumbed to. Bucky fisted his hand in Steve’s shirt and sighed against his mouth, remembering their first kiss, in the same apartment on an evening in 1943. He was to ship out the next morning, to leave Steve behind. He’d known then that there had been something special about Steve Rogers, something that he wanted to hold onto for the rest of his days, however long that might have been. He recalled how much he had loved Steve then, and during all of those years that they had been together, but he had never thought to say it, because he always assumed that there would be time to do that later.

There had never been a “later.” But there was a “now.”

“Steve, I love you too,” he rasped against Steve’s mouth during a brief moment in which he had come up for air.

Steve smiled against Bucky’s lips, his hand moving to card through Bucky’s hair, before resting to cradle the back of his head in his palm. “I’ve been waiting to hear you say that for seventy years.”

“You’re a punk.”

“Jerk.”


End file.
